Winter Meetings – Quiet as Usual

The Winter Meetings have ended… what do the Orioles have to show for themselves?

For starters, they had the good sense to stay the hell away from Nick Swisher. The (lack of) move certainly had more to do with Swisher’s price tag than the way Baltimore fans might feel about him. The Nate McLouth signing basically put the nail in that coffin.

True to their modus operandi, the club made a couple of low-profile moves:

• Re-signing OF Nate McLouth
• Trading for OF Trayvon Robinson
• Signing IF Connor Jackson (MiL deal with ST invite)
• Re-signing  OF Lew Ford (MiL deal with ST invite)
• Selecting LHP TJ MacFarland in the Rule 5 draft

I’m pleased to see McLouth return. I’m underwhelmed by the remaining (in)activity. To be fair, I was underwhelmed last season, but with the team’s 2012 success and the ever-present pressure to stay afloat in the AL East, I was hoping for more.

The Orioles don’t need to compete with the Blue Jays to win the off-season (those teams rarely seem to win in the post-season, anyway), but it is disconcerting to see opportunities to improve the club pass, now that there is some reasonable expectation that they will be “in the mix” this year.

In his closing session with the media, Dan Duquette did not rule out the possibility that a trade negotiated during the the meetings wouldn’t be consummated in the future.What is missing is that middle-of-the-order bat. It sounded as if Duquette was dangling some of the young starting pitching – it will be interesting to see if it simply wasn’t appealing enough to other clubs, or if he is just taking his time in swinging a deal.

Other clubs will naturally want some combination of Bundy/Gausman, which is obviously crazy talk. Duquette would never say they’re “off the table,” but there is no way he is going to trade away those two gems. Instead, it looks like he is trying to unload some combination of Matusz, Arrieta, Britton and maybe Tillman (plus lesser prospects?) to get a bat.

The last regime famously tried to “grow the arms and buy the bats.” The next few weeks will show whether Duquette has the arms in his stable to pull off a meaningful trade. If not, the team will go to camp looking very much like the one that was last seen leaving the field at Yankee Stadium.

Here’s hoping we see more of this.